with some exquisite poetry, that was, two or three months ago, in Hone’s Book. . . . The poem I mean is in Hone’s Book as far back as April. I do not know who wrote it; but ’tis a poem I envy—that and Montgomery’s “Last Man”: I envy the writers, because I feel I could have done something like them.’ It first appeared in Hone’s Year Book for April 30, 1831, with the title ‘The Meadows in Spring,’ and the following letter to the Editor. ‘These verses are in the old style; rather homely in expression; but I honestly profess to stick more to the simplicity of the old poets than the moderns, and to love the philosophical good humor of our old writers more than the sickly melancholy of the Byronian wits. If my verses be not good, they are good humored, and that is something.’ With a few verbal changes they were sent to the Athenæum, and appeared in that paper on July 9, 1831, accompanied by a note of the Editor’s, from which it is evident that he supposed them to have been written by Lamb.
To the Editor of the Athenæum.
Sir,
These verses are something in the old style, but not the worse for that: not that I mean to call them good: but I am sure they would not have been better, if dressed up in the newest Montgomery fashion, for which I cannot say I have much love. If they are fitted for your paper, you are welcome
to them. I send them to you, because I find only in your paper a love of our old literature, which is almost monstrous in the eyes of modern ladies and gentlemen. My verses are certainly not in the present fashion; but, I must own, though there may not be the same merit in the thoughts, I think the style much better: and this with no credit to myself, but to the merry old writers of more manly times.
Your humble servant,
Epsilon.
’Tis a dull sight
To see the year dying,
When winter winds
Set the yellow wood sighing:
Sighing, oh! sighing.When such a time cometh,
I do retire
Into an old room
Beside a bright fire:
Oh, pile a bright fire!And there I sit
Reading old things,
Of knights and lorn damsels,
While the wind sings—
Oh, drearily sings!I never look out
Nor attend to the blast;
For all to be seen
Is the leaves falling fast:
Falling, falling!But close at the hearth,
Like a cricket, sit I,
Reading of summer
And chivalry—
Gallant chivalry!Then with an old friend
I talk of our youth—
How ’twas gladsome, but often
Foolish, forsooth:
But gladsome, gladsome!Or to get merry
We sing some old rhyme,
That made the wood ring again
In summer time—
Sweet summer time!Then go we to smoking,
Silent and snug:
Nought passes between us,
Save a brown jug—
Sometimes!And sometimes a tear
Will rise in each eye,
Seeing the two old friends
So merrily—
So merrily!And ere to bed
Go we, go we,
Down on the ashes
We kneel on the knee,
Praying together!Thus, then, live I,
Till, ’mid all the gloom,
By heaven! the bold sun
Is with me in the room.
Shining, shining!Then the clouds part,
Swallows soaring between;
The spring is alive,
And the meadows are green!I jump up, like mad,
Break the old pipe in twain,
And away to the meadows,
The meadows again!
I had very little hesitation, from internal evidence alone, in identifying these verses with those which FitzGerald had written, as he said, when a lad, or little more than a lad, and sent to the Athenæum, but all question has been set at rest by the discovery of a copy in a common-place book belonging to the late Archdeacon Allen, with the heading ‘E. F. G.,’ and the date ‘Naseby, Spring, 1831.’ This copy differs slightly from those in the Year Book and in the Athenæum, and in place of the tenth stanza it has,
So winter passeth
Like a long sleep
From falling autumn
To primrose-peep.
But although at this time he appears to have written nothing more himself he was not unmindful of what was done by others, for in May 1831 he writes to Allen, ‘I have bought A. Tennyson’s poems. How good Mariana is!’ And again a year later, after a night-ride on the coach to London, ‘I forgot to tell you that when I came up in the mail, and fell a dozing in the morning,